Of Jung's most influential ideas, the concept of synchronicity has perhaps been more widely embraced by our popular culture and entered into its common experience and vocabulary. A prominent scholar and professor of religious studies recently said, “I have stopped believing in most things, but I do believe in synchronicity.” Even in the pages of the Scientific American, the publisher of Skeptic magazine shared a powerful synchronicity that he and his wife experienced during their wedding that shook his “skepticism to the core.” 

Synchronicities are both gifts and challenges. They can be felt as acts of grace or the subtle patternings of a cosmic artist, yet they can also suggest an elusive trickster who demands careful discernment both outer and inner. There seem to be stages that individuals go through in their deepening recognition of the synchronistic dimension of life. Synchronicities can compensate for the one-sidedness of egoic consciousness and move the individual psyche toward wholeness. They also have, like all things, a shadow side. Most profoundly, they can give us intimations of the numinous. 

In our postmodern age, when all the old metanarratives and spiritual frameworks are contested, awareness of synchronicities has become, for many alert individuals, a crucial source of psychological orientation and spiritual nourishment.

Richard Tarnas is professor emeritus of cultural history and psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He has taught courses in the history of ideas, archetypal studies, depth psychology, and religious evolution. He has also frequently lectured on archetypal studies and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute and was formerly the director of programs and education at Esalen Institute. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern widely used in universities. His second book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network and is the basis for the just released 10-episode documentary series "The Changing of the Gods". He is a past president of the International Transpersonal Association and long served on the Board of Governors for the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.